fl 



Descriptive 
l^eading 




IllastPated 



12 liaotepft Slides 



WILDAM H. RAU 

PHILADELPHIA 
I1S90 



A 



DESCRIPTIVE READING 



ON 



RUSSIA 

ILLUSTRATED BY TWELVE LANTERN n ^''^^^^^ ^ v- <k 
SLIDES 



^00 ^i 



WILLIAM H. RAU 

PHILADELPHIA 
1890 



Copyright, i8go, by William H. Rati. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



1. The Winter Palace, St. Petersburgh. 

2. Church of the Trinity, St. Petersburgh. 

3. Statue of Peter the Great, St. Petersburgh. 

4. St. Isaac's Cathedral, St. Petersburgh. 

5. The Church Vladimir, St. Petersburgh. 

6. Moscow and the Kremlin, 

7. Church of the Savior, Moscow. 

8. The Great Bell, Moscow. 

9. The Tower Ivan, Moscow. 

10. Interior of the Church of the Redeemer, Moscow, 

11. Greek Chapel, Southern Russia. 

12. A Peasant Family. 



RUSSIA. 

Whether the traveler comes from the East or the 
West or the Southward, unless he goes by sea, he 
must approach the Capital of Russia by crossing- 
hundreds of miles of dismal forests, bleak plains, and 
swamps which offer few traces of human habitation 
or industry. Hour after hour he gazes upon plains 
that stretch away, level, monotonous and without 
character ; from time to time he traverses a forest of 
pine varied with silver birch. At very rare intervals 
he sees a village composed of a score of cottages 
built of logs and surrounded by poorly tilled fields ; 
and near the village is a level crossing, where as the 
train passes, strings of primitive, four-wheeled carts 
are waiting in the rough road to continue their route. 

In comparison with this monotonous outlook St. 
Petersburgh seems like an oasis in the desert, and 
our enthusiasm knows no bounds as the train makes 
a wide curve and brings the spires and domes of the 
capital into sight. The history of St. Petersburgh is 
a romance. One of the Polish poets wrote : "Human 
hands built Rome ; divine hands created Venice ; 
but he who sees St. Petersburgh will say, * This town 
is the work of the devil.' " It is indeed the most 
conspicuous triumph of human industry and patience 
in existence. 

Ivan the Terrible conceived the idea of erecting a 
city on the Gulf of Finland, but it remained for Peter 
the Great, the most enterprising and progressive of all 

(857) 



858 RUSSIA. 

the Russian Czars, to carry it into effect. He selected 
the most available site near the mouth of the Neva 
River, and called a vast army into service to subdue 
the swamps. Every year forty thousand workmen 
were drafted from different parts of his dominions to 
dig and fill, hew stones, make bricks, a.id build walls ; 
and he stood by as their master builder, superintend- 
ing everything, and directing all details. Every boat 
upon the Neva or the Gulf of Finland, and every cart 
upon the highway, had to bring to St. Petersburgh a 
certain amount of building material annually as a 
tax ; and every noble and property-owner in the em- 
pire had to contribute something toward the con- 
struction of the palaces. All thieves in prison, all exiles 
in Siberia, were sent to St. Petersburgh to labor, and 
there was not a man, woman or child in all the 
dominion, but did something toward carrying out the 
Czar's great plan. 

In this age, a monarch without technical knowledge, 
with none but rude tools and poor materials and no 
skilled workmen, who should undertake to erect a 
city of palaces in a marsh, would be considered 
insane ; but with Titanic energy and boundless enthu- 
siasm Peter commenced and continued the work. 
His instruments were constantly breaking in his 
hands, his workmen died by the thousand, his walls 
crumbled and his foundations sank in the mud ; yet 
he toiled on with a persistence and a courage that has 
never been surpassed ; recognizing his mistakes soon 
enough to correct them ; never allowing a word of 
despondency to escape himself, or permitting an ex- 
pression of discouragement from others, and as a 
monument of his indomitable will and energy we 



RUSSIA. 859 

liave to-day this city of palaces — glorious St. Peters- 
burgh. 

1. Tlie Winter Palace, St. Petersburgh. — Fore- 
most among the colossal structures of the Russian 
capital is the Winter Palace, which is one of the finest 
buildings in the world. This enormous pile was be- 
gun in 1732, finished in 1762 ; it was partly destroyed 
hy fire in 1837, but was rebuilt from the original draw- 
ings in 1839. It is a broad rectangular block, about 
eighty feet high, with a frontage of 455 feet, and a 
breadth of 350 feet. It contains seventeen hundred 
rooms, and in the olden times as many as six thousand 
people have been sheltered and fed under 'its roof 
The outside of the palace is neither pleasing nor 
commendable ; the sticco surface of its facades being 
washed with a terra-cotta color, picked out with a 
lighter tone of yellow. The iron roof is painted red. 
Its only claim to merit is its immensity, which, ac- 
cording to the Russian idea, is a very considerable 
claim. The palace has been occupied during the 
winter by all the czars till the present one, who will 
not live there, but keeps it for ceremonials only, while 
he resides in a much smaller and less imposing house 
which he occupied as crown prince. 

The main entrance to the palace opens from the 
banks of the river Neva into a magnificent vestibule of 
marble with wide stairways reaching to the several halls 
and imperial reception rooms above. The stairway is 
adorned by groups of statuary, and the long vestibule, 
200 feet by 60, presents an array of ideal figures in 
marble, and statues of the heroes of Russian history. 
The throne room is a magnificent apartment of marble, 



86o RUSSIA. 

so large that the entire White House at Washington . 
might be erected within its walls. 

The entire palace is divided into long lines of 
dining-rooms, reception rooms and art galleries of 
great beauty and gorgeous decoration. The amount 
of gilding to be seen passes all comparison. 

2. (Inircli ot the Trinity, St. Petersbur§rh. — Chief 
among the architectural attractions of the city are the 
churches, of which there are a great number Our 
first visit shall be to the Church of the Holy Trinity. 
The building is in the form of a Greek Cross, like all 
the Russian churches, each of the grand entrances 
being approached by broad flights of steps. Each 
portico has massive pillars crowned with capitals of 
bronze. Over the centre of the cross rises the chief 
or central dome, the cupola of dark blue color, be- 
spangled with stars. At the crest is a miniature 
dome, an exact copy of the great one beneath, sur- 
mounted by a golden cross. Four domes, exact 
duplicates of the larger one, are placed over the four 
arms of the cross, and complete a most harmonious 
and beautiful piece of architecture. 

Let us enter the church, in which service is being 
celebrated. All within is richness and obscurity. 
The walls, the roof, the ceiling of the dome and the 
sanctuary are adorned with a wealth of all kinds of 
ornament, that glitters in the dim, mysterious light. 
In front of the golden doors of the sanctuary a space 
is railed off by means of a wooden balustrade, around 
which the worshipers are gathered thickly ; spread- 
ing out on all sides, so that the vast church is full, 
with the exception of a space for circulation on the 



RUSSIA. 86l 

outer edge of the congregation. There are no seats ; 
the worshipers stand up bareheaded, — a crowd con- 
sisting, almost entirely of men, mostly of the lower 
orders, clad in rusty clothes, with tall boots, red or 
white shirts embroidered with red or blue thread, the 
collar buttoned at one side of the neck, or fastened 
with a silv^er brooch, and over the shirt a long black 
or russet coat, with skirts plaited closely round the 
waist. Meanwhile the incense rises thick in the air, 
tinging the luminous obscurity with clouds of blue 
smoke ; the worshipers follow the service without 
books, crossing themselves and bowing incessantly, 
and from time to time kneeling on the marble floor, 
striking the ground wirti the brow ; all simply, camly, 
fervently, without ostentation or concern about mere 
formality. 

3. Statue of Peter the Oreat, St. Petersburg-h. — 

The worshipers come in and go out as they please, 
and after a time we leave the Church of the Holy 
Trinity and make our way toward St. Isaac's Cathe- 
dral. Before reaching it we pass one of the most 
remarkable monuments in the world. On a huge 
block of granite, forty-two feet long, thirty-four feet 
broad, and twenty-one feet high, is erected an eques- 
trian statue of Peter the Great, modelled and cast by 
a Frenchman, Etrenne Maurice Falconet. The em- 
peror once stood upon this rock on the shore of the 
Gulf of Finland, and witnessed a victory by his 
infant fleet over a superior force of Swedes. It is 
estimated that the mass weighs 3,200,000 pounds. 
To remove it to the capital a solid road-bed was first 
built, and then, after four months of hard labor, under 



862 RUSSIA. 

the direction' of skillful engineers, the rock was raised 
so that heavy plates of brass could be placed under it. 
These plates rested upon hundreds of cannon balls, 
five inches in diameter, and they ran in grooves in 
other plates of metal which were laid upon the road. 
Then, by the use of windlasses worked by a force of 
fourteen hundred men, the rock was slowly moved 
toward the city. When the bank of the River Neva 
was reached, the rock was placed upon an enormous 
raft, buoyed up by air chambers, and floated down to 
the city. The removal required seven months of 
labor to accomplish. The rock was placed in the 
park in front of the palace of the Holy Synod. The 
emperor is represented as checking his fiery horse on 
the edge of the precipice, and pointing over the bay to 
-he battle. The statue is balanced on the hind legs 
of the horse, and is considered one of the most remark- 
able pieces of bronze art in existence. 

4. St. Isaac's Cathedral, St. I*etersburgli. — Leav- 
ing the monument of the founder of the city, we turn 
toward St. Isaac's Cathedral, a splendid structure of 
the most costly materials, and an example of the 
purest architecture. The exterior is severely plain ; 
so plain that one whose eyes have become accustomed 
to the elaborate ornamentation of the Gothic cathe- 
drals on the continent, has to study it awhile to com- 
prehend its beauty. It is one of the finest and richest 
specimens of the pure Greek in the world, and the 
longer and oftener one looks at it, the greater do its 
glories appear. Each portico has massive pillars of 
polished granite sixty feet high, with a diameter of 
seven and a half feet ; the finest assemblage of granite 



RUSSIA. 863 

monoliths in the world, all from the same quarry in 
Finland. Over the peristyles, and at twice their 
height, rises the central dome 296 feet, supported by 
thirty pillars, which, although gigantic in size, look 
small compared with those below. The dome is cov- 
ered with copper overlaid with gold bullion. The 
value of the gold upon this roof is nearly a million 
roubles, and it glitters in the sun with dazzling bril- 
liancy. This dome, reaching far above everything 
else, is the most conspicuous object in the city, and 
can be seen for miles around the country like a 
golden mountain. 

Passing through the great bronze doors, forty-four 
feet wide by thirty-six feet high, we enter the interior 
of the church. Hardly anywhere else in the world 
can be found such an assemblage of rare stones. 
There are pillars of malachite, columns of lapsis- 
lazuli, friezes and wainscoting of both materials, 
whose proportions exceed anything that has hitherto 
been done in these beautiful stones ; a great part of 
the floor is of jasper. The walls, the roof, the ceiling, 
the sanctuary, and the various chapels are adorned 
with paintings, mosaics, metal work, colossal garlands 
of golden angels, and wealth of all kinds of ornament, 
that glitter magnificently in the dim light of the 
interior. 

5. The Cliurcli Vladimir, St. Petersburjjrli. — Leav- 
ing the cathedral we make our way to the Church 
Vladimir, which differs in form in having one of the 
arms prolonged to form a sort of vestibule. This 
allows of an additional cupola, which is similar in 
shape to the central dome ; while those at the four 



864 RUSSIA, 

corners are more Oriental in effect, and suggest the 
mosques of Asia. 

All the churches in St. Petersburgh contain rich 
offerings of silver, gold and precious stones ; there 
are diamonds enough to make every distressed family 
in the empire comfortable, and to build school- 
houses in every town ; there is gilding enough and 
vessels of silver and gold enough to clothe all the 
naked and feed all the hungry in Russia; but the 
veneration of the people is so great that the beggars 
who sit before the doors of the churches, give half 
the alms they receive to enrich the overflowing treas- 
uries of the priests. 

One sees few women among the worshipers in the 
churches, which is exactly the reverse of what is the 
case in Roman Catholic countries. This is explained 
by the fact that the women are detained at their 
homes, while every man in town, no matter what his 
engagements are, be he laborer or drosky driver, 
merchant or banker, never fails to enter the church 
and say a prayer or two every day. 

The service is all chanting, all harmony ; no melody. 
There are often solos for the tenor or bass voices, 
which are finely rendered, but they are always in a 
monotone. The deep tones of the men mingling 
with treble of the boys, produces a sweet harmony, 
unlike any other ; modern, and yet suggestive of 
antique Orientalism, and inclining in its terminal 
notes towards the wailing tones of all so-called bar- 
baric music. The effect is weird and thrilling. 

6. Moscow and tho Kremlin. — With regret we 
leave palatial St. Petersburgh, but with delight turn our 



RUSSIA. 865 

footsteps toward Holy Moscow. When the project 
of building a railroad between the two cities was 
under discussion, there was an active rivalry among 
the towns that lay along the route as to which should 
have the benefit of the improvement ; for the road 
could not pass through all of them without having as 
many coils as a serpent. The Minister of Public 
Works, worn out with the problem of satisfying all 
the princes and nobles whose property interests were 
involved, went to the Czar and laid the case before 
him, asking for orders. " Give me the map," ex- 
claimed his majesty. The map was brought, and 
taking a ruler that lay on his table, he drew a direct 
line from St. Petersburgh to Moscow. Then, return- 
ing the map, he said, " Build the line thus, no matter 
whom it helps or hurts ;" and it was so constructed, 
the longest piece of straight track in the world ; 
there being but few small curves and very slight 
grades the entire distance. The cars run slowly and 
cautiously, making not more than fifteen or eighteen 
miles an hour, and stopping frequently at section- 
houses, and sometimes at bridges, for the Russian 
engineers know there is danger everywhere, and if a 
fatal accident occurs they are punished without mercy. 

The first sight of Moscow from the car window, is 
neither impressive nor pleasing ; but to the eyes of 
the Russian it is beautiful, noble, and sacred. There 
is scarcely a foot of ground that is not historic and 
holy, for Moscow is more than a thousand years old 
as it stands, and there was another city on this site, 
whose origin is lost in the mists of fables. 

Moscow is truly the mirror of Russia — a city of 
violent contrasts, a mixture of Europe and Asia. 



866 RUSSIA. 

The Kremlin, the mightiest citadel in the world, with 
its frowning battlements, covered with the rust and 
lichens of centuries, is the focus from which every- 
thing radiates, and around it clusters a forest of 
golden domes and spires, from an ocean of green and 
blue-roofed houses, grotesque cupolas and minarets, 
all forming a. bewildering mass of Oriental and bar- 
baric splendor which is unequalled. 

7 riiurch of tlie Savior. Mo^^cow. — One of the 

finest churches in the world stands in Moscow, — the 
Church of the Savior, — erected to commemorate the 
overthrow of Napoleon. The foundations were laid 
in 1815, but the interior was not completed till 1882, 
the entire structure costing forty millions of dollars. 
It is impressively simple in design, and built of white 
marble, all of 'the materials being imported from 
Italy. The interior is grand and beautiful, finished 
in rare Siberian stones, malachite, lapis lazuli, jasper, 
and porphyry. The entire floor is of jasper, while 
the ceilings and walls are covered with mosaic. The 
building covers 73,000 square feet, and the top of the 
cross that surmounts the dome is 340 feet from the 
ground. The central dome is gilded, and ^1,200,000 
worth of bullion was used to do the work. The 
amount of gold bullion in the interior, for the 
mosaics and the decoration of the altar, was ;^ 1,300, - 
000. The interior is lighted with 38,000 wax candles, 
resting in 1240 chandeliers; the Russians will not 
use gas in their churches. The immense sums ex- 
pended upon this church were acquired by the volun- 
tary offerings of a poverty-stricken people, who are 
without schools or even the comforts of life, but have 
over 500 other churches within sight of the dome. 



RUSSIA. 867 

8. The Great Bell, Moscow. — Who has not heard 
of the mighty Kremlin, the great fortress that has 
stood for a thousand years, and sheltered for so many 
centuries the throne and the treasures of the Russian 
empire? It is the fortress that protects the holy 
city ; not only the legal residence of the Czar, but 
the Vatican of the Russian Church. It stands upon 
an eminence, a city within a city, surrounded on 
three sides by the Volga, and enclosed within a wall 
that is nearly a mile and a half long. 

The group of buildings within the walls consists of 
the ancient palace of the Czar, the treasury, the pal- 
ace of the Holy Synod, two monasteries, the great 
tower of Ivan, the Church of the Assumption, in 
which the Czars must be crowned, the Church of the 
Annunciation, in which they must be baptised and 
married, and the Church of St. Michael, in which, 
until the last century, their royal bones were laid. 
There are barracks for soldiers, dormitories for 
priests, and several buildings of minor importance — 
a gorgeous cluster of magnificence and decay, every 
foot of ground having its history, every wall and 
window its romance, and every room its tragedy. 

The first objects to be seen when entering the 
Kremlin are the great tower of Ivan and the great 
bell of Moscow. The Czar Kolokol, as the bell is 
called, was cast in the fourteenth century by the 
Czar Boris Gudenoff, as a measure of atonement for 
the innocent blood through which he waded to the 
throne. Boris erected a scaffolding to support it, 
and it is said to have been rung in his time, but the 
hangings gave way in 1684 and the bell fell to the 
ground and was broken. The Empress Anne had it 



868 RUSSIA. 

recast in 1733. During a fire in the Kremlin in 1737, 
the bell was in the midst of the flames, and became 
so heated that when streams of water were thrown 
upon it a great crack opened. Under the Czar 
Nicholas it was removed to its present position and 
elevated to the pedestal on which it now stands. 
Durmg the removal the cracked piece fell out and 
has never been restored. The bell is two feet thick 
and 67 feet in circumference, and weighs 444,000 
pounds. The broken piece is seven feet high and its 
weight is II tons. The interior of the bell is fitted 
up as a chapel, and mass is occasionally said there. 

9. The Tower Ivan, Moscow. — From the great 
bell we turn to the Tower Ivan. Tradition points to 
a very remote origin, but history asserts that the 
tower was commenced about 1590, and was completed 
in 1600, and it is now supposed that its name was 
derived solely from the fact that the name of its 
architect was Ivan. The tower is 325 feet in height, 
and consists of five stories, four of these being 
octagonal and the last cylindrical. The gilded 
cupola and cross that surmount the structure were 
set up in 18 12, to replace the cross that the French 
removed under the impression that it was of great 
value. The basement is occupied by a chapel dedi- 
cated to St. Nicholas, the patron of all maidens about 
to marry, and one meets many of them there, par- 
ticularly on Saturday, when they go to say their 
prayers before the ceremony, for Sunday is the 
popular day for weddings. Within the tower, above 
the chapel, is the famous chime of bells, thirty-four 
in number, the smaller ones being cast of solid silver. 



RUSSIA. 869 

The largest bell weighs 64 tons and the smallest only 
a few hundred pounds. They are without doubt the 
finest set of bells in the world, but are seldom rung 
except upon Easter morning and when the Czar is in 
the city. Every visitor to Moscow should mount the 
450 steps leading to the gallery under the cupola, for 
the view from the summit is one of the most striking 
and unique in Europe. 

10. Interior of the Cliiircli of the Redeemer, 
Moscow. — Everywhere in Russia we notice the ex- 
treme piety of the people, the multitude of sacred 
pictures, and the incessant crossings and genuflection ; 
but nowhere are the manifestations of religious feel- 
ing more conspicuous than in the streets of Moscow. 
The exceptionally sacred character of the the city 
and especially of the Kremlin, attract a constant 
succession of pilgrims, men and women, who prostrate 
themselves before its churches, and go round to the 
various shrines kissing image after image and relio 
after relic. 

Of the many beautiful churches in Moscow we 
shall look at the interior of but one, the Church of 
the Redeemer. The beautiful inlaid floor of polished 
marble of various colors, thefine paintings that adorn 
the wall, and the shining surface of the sanctuary, all 
contribute to the rich and splendid effect found in the 
Russian churches. But amid so much magnificence, 
let us pause to ask what effect the religion has upon 
the morals of the people. Seemingly very little. 
The upper classes, the court and the nobility, 
are notoriously profligate, corrupt and dishonest. 
The officials of the Russian empire have been noted 



Syo RUSSIA. 

for taking bribes as far back as tradition runs; while 
the merchants use sharp practice wherever possible. 
Among the peasants the conditions are about the 
same. Drunkenness, dishonesty and all forms of 
depravity are the rule, not the exception. It is 
asserted that the priests never reprove drunkenness, 
and that they discourage the organization of temper- 
ance societies, receiving a liberal and regular subsidy 
from the manufacturer of the spirits for permitting 
the natural appetite of the peasant for stimulants to go 
unrestrained. 

1 1. Greek Cliapel, Southern Russia. — There are 
churches enough throughout the empire, for in everv 
collection of cabins rises a splendid temple with a 
gilded dome and spire, sheltering a mass of precious 
vestments, candle-sticks and altar plate of solid silver, 
and usually an altar of malachite or soine other 
precious stone. One always finds, even in the most 
poverty-stricken and desolate villages, Icons, as the 
pictures of the Savior are called, covered with 
shields of gold and ornamented with valuable jewels. 
The vestments of the priest cost more than all the 
r st of clothing in the village, and the contributions 
for the support of the church are usually equal to, if 
not greater than, a third of the combined incomes of 
the people. Of the scanty earnings of the peasant 
one-third goes to the Church and another third to the 
Crown, and both exactions are paid without the slight- 
est resistence. The peasant is only glad that the 
priest and tax gatherer do not take all. To him the 
interior of the church, gilded from floor to dome, -and 
de< orated with ornaments of silver and gold is a repre- 



RUSSIA. 871 

sentation of the heaven the priests teach him is await- 
ing those who say their prayers, fast on fast days, and 
obey the Czar. He is always loyal to the Church 
and the State. The uneducated peasant is never a 
Nihilist, never an atheist, but pays his taxes and his 
tithes without murmuring, and expects no more than 
his father got, which was nothing. The only recom- 
pense he has is to creep into some gaudy chapel, bow 
his head to the floor in front of the picture of his 
favorite saint, and lets his listless mind enjoy the 
visions of Paradise that float over it. 

12. A Peasant Family. — Let us look closely at 
one of these peasant families. How these people live 
is a mystery to all who have not investigated the sub- 
ject. The ordinary traveler sees only their little 
gardens, where is grown a scanty allowance of 
potatoes, corn, turnips, and cabbage. They eat when 
they are hungry, generally cabbage soup, which is 
ahvays simmering on the fire ; the men are drunk as 
often as they can get vodka, and at night they curl 
themselves up somewhere on the floor in a warm 
place to sleep. In the cabins one seldom finds a bed 
or a table or a chair, and very few dishes. They 
have no comforts v/hatever, and not even the 
necessaries of life; the church takes place of them all. 

The peasant is essentially a religious being. He 
believes in only two things, the Church and the Czar. 
One represents the powers above, and the other the 
powers below ; but at the same time he regards 
religion as a series of ceremonies of a magical rather 
than a spiritual significance. He is dull, stupid, and 
submissive, and is profoundly ignorant of everything 



872 RUSSIA. 

that is beyond the sight of his own eyes or the 
hearing of his own ears. He seldom goes beyond 
the confines of his native parish unless he is con- 
scripted into the army, and then he seldom returns. 
He thinks that all the world are like himself and his 
relatives, and is satisfied with his lot because he 
cannot conceive of existence under any other cir- 
cumstances. And indeed, he seems to be happy 
only under two conditions, when he is drunk on 
vodka and when he is saying his prayers before his 
favorite saint. 



